Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today told the Union government to stop centrally—sponsored schemes and confine itself to making broad policies for development, leaving their implementation to the states as they have “unique” needs.
He suggested that the Centre should constitute a strategic committee for States, decide a roadmap for five years and then monitor the State’s performance on the set targets.
“You (Centre) develop policy and broad roadmap. Leave the decision on schemes for States,” Mr. Kumar said addressing the Union government while speaking at a roundtable on food security here.
Asking the Union government to “stop Centrally—sponsored schemes, he said, “every State has its unique needs. You give us task...you decide a target and help and monitor us. But why go into minute details?”
Speaking on the topic ‘Combating Food Inflation’, Mr. Kumar said there was a need to change the mindset while framing development policies.
Referring to the proposal of inter-linking of rivers in Bihar, the Chief Minister rued that the Centre was still to finalise the Detailed Action Plan even after lapse of three years since his government submitted a proposal.
He said inter-linking or rivers could have helped the state tackle the problem of floods.
Mr. Kumar also termed as a “joke” the Centre’s allocation of Rs 400 crore for the Eastern India Green Revolution project and said the government “needs to be cautious as the number of BPL families would increase with the rise in food prices“.
Talking about BPL families, he said the Centre estimated them to be 65 lakh in number while the state’s figures showed the number to be 1.4 crore.
He said the government of India needs to make a proper policy about safeguarding the interests of farmers while allowing entry of private sector into hybrid seed industry.
Listing out achievements of his government in agriculture development and law order improvement, Mr. Kumar urged the private investors to come to the State and help in its turn around.
He said the State government needs their support in policy, expertise, fund to take its development agenda forward.
